Helicopters and other aircraft are known, but typically such aircraft have required highly trained pilots to operate them. Air travel accessible to non-pilots for casual use and/or recreation, such as to commute to work, run an errand, visit a friend, take a ride for fun, etc., have been imagined, but to date aircraft have not been provided that would enable such a casual, non-pilot user to operate the aircraft.
Aircraft typically have a number of manual control devices, sometimes referred to herein as “inceptors”, which enable a person piloting the aircraft to provide manual input that is transmitted in the form of electrical signals, e.g., voltage levels, to a specialized computer called a “flight controller”. The inputs to the flight controller typically take the form of one or more of the following: pitch, roll, yaw, and throttle. The inputs typically are translated by the flight controller into control signals sent to propulsion engines (e.g., motors or engines that drive propellers, rotors, etc.) and control surfaces, such as flaps, rudders, and airfoil (e.g., wing, rotor blade, etc.) pitch.
To be practical for flight by non-pilots, an aircraft may need to have fewer degrees of freedom and/or fewer “high gain” (or high attention) tasks to be accomplished at the same time. One simplification that may be advantageous may be automatic altitude maintenance once the aircraft is at a desired altitude. Altitude hold techniques have been developed for and used in drone aircraft, for example, but typically such techniques depend on sensors (e.g., GPS, accelerometer, radar, pressure altimeters, or other sensors), which may not be considered sufficiently reliable for use (without backup) in aircraft intended for human flight.
Automatic trim control systems for helicopters have been provided. Such systems may, for example, use servomotors or other devices to physically hold, move, and/or preload cyclic or other manual controls, as required, to eliminate the need for the pilot to maintain a constant trim force against the inceptor.